Thanks for the instructions I might just give this a go. Also as the card is being tweaked in Linux would that also be a good time to remove the other bloat like the INQ apps etc. or is this best done in Android?

Either has the same result, but I would suggest testing it either way before screwing the back down. It's been long enough that I don't remember which apps did it, but some things that I thought were bloatware were required for boot. Removing one (or more) of them also triggered a factory reset a few boots later. The first time I just thought I got unlucky, but it happened again after the same deletes. I think it was the OTA downloader that did it, but I didn't take the time to figure it out for sure. I ended up just removing the most obvious ones (INQ apps, YouTube, Facebook...) and the main Kobo app so I could sideload updates (the Kobo app from Google Play works fine once it's on the Vox, but the Vox is blacklisted from downloading it).